Pagan's vision, diligence remade NKY's riverfront

May 3, 2013

Wally Pagan, former Covington city manager and former president of Southbank Partners in his home office in Wilder with an oil painting of the Purple People Bridge, which Southbank Partners was instrumental in turning into a pedestrian walkway. / The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy

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@avbnky

When you think of Northern Kentucky’s riverfront, it’s the landmarks – the Ascent, Newport on the Levee, SouthShore – that come to mind rather than the many people who helped get them built.

But none of the riverfront development over the past three decades would have happened without one key figure: Wally Pagan, the local government official and developer whose vision launched a decades-long development riverfront boom.

Next Thursday, Pagan, 69, will receive the prestigious Covington Award from the nonprofit Friends of Covington group for his past, present and future work in that city and across the region’s river cities.

As Covington city manager during the late 1970s and early 1980s, he laid the groundwork for much of the riverfront development that followed. As president of Southbank Partners during the late 1990s and 2000s, Pagan turned the young agency into an economic development powerhouse for the entire Northern Kentucky shoreline.

“A lot of things he envisioned for Northern Kentucky have come to fruition. He always has had a vision for this community, and he achieved that both as a city administrator as well as at Southbank. A lot of things we have that are attractive for this community are because of his vision,” said political consultant Jay Fossett, Covington city attorney and city manager during the 2000s.

Pagan helped bring the Northern Kentucky Convention Center and the Newport Aquarium to the southern side of the Ohio River, and had a hand in other office and residential developments that now dot the Covington and Newport skylines. And he continues today, leading the charge to turn the Purple People Bridge into a hotel and entertainment complex.

“For me, it all started in Covington,” he said. “My whole career started in Covington, and it grew in Covington. And I want to see it propagate, all the way through the whole process: not just Covington, but all the river cities. Growing up in Bellevue, that’s always been near and dear to me.”

Pagan’s influence in Northern Kentucky’s largest city goes well beyond the walls of City Hall or the banks of the Ohio River: He is a past chairman of both the Covington Business Council and the Rosedale Manor Task Force, and he served on the city’s Urban Design Review Board for more than 20 years.

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“He exemplifies Friends of Covington’s philosophy; he’s someone who has worked tirelessly to better the city through all of his efforts,” said former Mayor Butch Callery, a longtime friend.

A career with roots in Covington

Pagan’s first job was in Covington: development director for Villa Madonna College during the late 1960s as it prepared to move to Crestview Hills and become Thomas More College. From there he went into political consulting, a path that led to Covington City Hall. For nearly a decade during the 1970s and 1980s, he worked as assistant city manager and, later, city manager.

At the young age of about 30, Pagan found himself managing a city of 60,000 people and a $40 million annual budget. Task number one was to right Covington’s listing financial ship.

“When I came on board, the nose was halfway in the water: We were sinking,” he said. “We had no budget surplus. The City Commission was (divided) and kind of irresponsible, spent money recklessly. So the first two or three or four years was just keeping the ship floating. And that was a pretty difficult task.”

He quickly realized a new source of income was needed to counteract the city’s financial troubles. The path forward became clear one day in the early 1980s, while standing on Riverside Drive with then-Cincinnati Mayor Bobbie Sterne and Ralph Haile, a prominent local bank president.

“Bobbie kept pointing to the beautiful Cincinnati skyline and said, ‘Look over there at what we’ve given you.’ And I kept thinking, ‘Why can’t we do that?’ ” Pagan said.

He and Haile put their heads together and came up with the Covington Riverside Redevelopment Plan, launched in 1982, which led to everything that followed.

Within the next 10 or 15 years, the “hot-sheet motels” and dilapidated warehouse buildings located west of the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge would give way to upscale hotels, the RiverCenter office towers and, eventually, the Northern Kentucky Convention Center.

Development moves east into Newport

Although Pagan left City Hall in the early 1980s, he didn’t go far. He played a key role in bringing the convention center to Covington in 1998 and branched out into neighboring Newport and Bellevue, helping bring the Newport Aquarium to the riverfront in 1999.

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“Covington had become the hotel district, the convention district, the office district. So what was going to happen from that point forward?” he said. “That’s how I got involved with Southbank: I thought, we need to have something more to do than just a convention center. So let’s move the development over to Newport and to Bellevue.”

Southbank Partners had been formed to bring the convention center to Covington, but Pagan turned it into a regional agency dedicated to improving the entire riverfront.

During the decade he led Southbank, the agency launched the popular Southbank Shuttle to move people between Covington’s convention and hotel district and Newport’s entertainment district; brought the Millennium Monument World Peace Bell to Newport; played a role in the creation of Newport on the Levee, and saved the old L&N Railroad Bridge from demolition and turned it into the pedestrian Purple People Bridge.

And he did it all while battling myriad health issues, including a decade-long battle with cancer.

“It’s amazing what he’s done, considering all the medical issues he has had,” Fossett said. “But he keeps on plugging away. He’s got a lot of grit.”

Pagan’s vision for the riverfront hasn’t been completed yet. He runs the Newport Southbank Bridge Co., which is working to turn the Purple People Bridge into $100 million hotel and retail complex. (An engineering study should be finished this summer.)

Southbank Partners is also working to secure funding for Riverfront Commons, an $80 million, 11-mile mixed-use trail that would run along the Ohio River from Ludlow to Fort Thomas. It would be the culmination of the 45 years Pagan has devoted to the riverfront region, connecting all the various projects he has helped bring to fruition.

“It’s going to take 15 or 20 years to do it, but it’ll get done. It’ll be long after I’m gone, but it’ll get done,” he said.

“I’m going to be very sad to leave the earth, because I would love to see this happen. But (the development is) going to continue on and on and on. All that’s one big work in progress; it’s never going to stop.” ■